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JS7 - Deployment of Scheduling Objects makes use of Signing Certificates to digitally sign workflows and other objects. Use of certificates for signing is not related to use of certificates to secure connections using HTTPS.

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HTTPS connections, see JS7 - How to create X.509 SSL TLS Certificates.

Users

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• Creating self-issued Certificates.
• Creating Private CA-signed Certificates.
• Purchasing Public CA-signed Certificates

can choose one of the following approachs:

• Self-issued Certificates are created individually per user and are deployed from individual certificate files to Controllers and Agents.
  • There is no security

Rollout of certificates to Controllers and Agents depends on the following choice:

• Self-issued Certificates have to be deployed from individual certificate files made available to Controllers and Agents.
  • There is no security gap in use of self-issued Certificates. When users store certificate files to Controllers and Agents then this proves that they trust the certificates.
• Private CA-signed Certificates are issued by users who operate their own Private Certificate Authority (CA). Individual Signing Certficates on behalf of users are not deployed to Controllers and Agents. Instead, the CA Certificate is deployed that was used to sign individual Signing Certificates.
  • The approach includes that any Signing Certificate signed by the CA will be accepted for deployment of scheduling objects.
  • For better control which certificates are made available for deplyoment, users might decide to use a specific Private CA.
• Public CA-signed Certificates are issued by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA) that validates the domain owner. They are not created by users but are purchased from the trusted CA and therefore are not considered in the article.

There is no difference in using a Private CA or Public CA concerning the functionality of X.509 certificates, usage for Signing, or security of certificates. The only difference is that users trust the Private CA that they set up on their own.

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Examples in the article make use of JS7 Release 2.7.2, OpenSSL 1.1.1k  FIPS 25 Mar 2021 for Unix and OpenSSL 3.1.4 24 Oct 2023 for Windows. OpenSSL ships with Linux & other Unix OS and is available for Windows.

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Creating self-issued Certificates

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Creating the Private Key and Certificate Signing Request

The steps to create a Private Key and Certificate Signing Request are the same similar for use of self-issued Certificates and Private CA-signed Certificates.

Users have the option to use ECDSA or RSA for the encryption type applied to the Private Key.

Users can run the following commands from the shell and replace the value of the key_name environment variable with a name of their choice that is used when creating related files.

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Using ECDSA Encryption

# Specify key name used for file names
key_name=signing

# Create Private Key
openssl ecparam -genkey -name secp384r1 -out ${key_name}.key

# Create Certificate Signing Request
 openssl req -new -sha512 -nodes \
    -key ${key_name}.key \
    -out ${key_name}.csr \
    -subj "/C=DE/ST=Berlin/L=Berlin/O=SOS/OU=IT/CN=${key_name}"

@rem Specify key name used for file names
set key_name=signing
 
@rem Create Private Key
openssl ecparam -genkey -name secp384r1 -out %key_name%.key
 
@rem Create Certificate Signing Request 
openssl req -new -sha512 -nodes ^
    -key %key_name%.key ^
    -out %key_name%.csr ^
    -subj "/C=DE/ST=Berlin/L=Berlin/O=SOS/OU=IT/CN=%key_name%"

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using_private_key_rsa using_private_key_rsa

Using RSA Encryption

# Specify key name used for file names
key_name=signing

# Create Private Key and Certificate Signing Request
openssl req -new -newkey rsa:4096 -sha256 -nodes \
    -keyout ${key_name}.key \
    -out ${key_name}.csr \
    -subj "/C=DE/ST=Berlin/L=Berlin/O=SOS/OU=IT/CN=${key_name}"

@rem Specify key name used for file names
set key_name=signing
 
@rem Create Private Key and Certificate Signing Request
openssl req -new -newkey rsa:4096 -sha256 -nodes ^
    -keyout %key_name%.key ^
    -out %key_name%.csr ^
    -subj "/C=DE/ST=Berlin/L=Berlin/O=SOS/OU=IT/CN=%key_name%"

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Creating the Certificate

Users can run the following commands from the shell and replace the value of the key_name environment variable with a name of their choice that is used when creating related files.

# Specify key name used for file names
key_name=signing

# Create Certificate
openssl x509 -req -sha512 -days 3652 \
    -signkey ${key_name}.key \
    -in ${key_name}.csr \
    -out ${key_name}.crt \
    -extfile <(printf "keyUsage=critical,nonRepudiation,digitalSignature\nextendedKeyUsage=critical,codeSigning\n")

@rem Specify key name used for file names
set key_name=signing
 
@rem Create Certificate
set user_crt_tmp_file=user-crt-%RANDOM%.tmp
echo keyUsage=critical,nonRepudiation,digitalSignature >> %user_crt_tmp_file%  
echo extendedKeyUsage=critical,codeSigning >> %user_crt_tmp_file%

 openssl x509 -req -sha512 -days 3652 ^
    -signkey %key_name%.key ^
    -in %key_name%.csr ^
    -out %key_name%.crt ^
    -extfile %user_crt_tmp_file%

del /q %user_crt_tmp_file%

Self-signed Certificates must be copied to the <data>/config/private/trusted-x509-keys directory of Controller and Agent instances.

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Creating CA-signed Certificates

Users have the option to create self-signed Certificates or Private CA-signed Certificates.

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Setting up the Private CA

For Private CA-signed Certificates a Certificate Authority (CA) is required owning a CA Private Key and CA Certificate. The CA Private Key and CA Certificate will be used to sign certificates on behalf of users.

• Setup of the Certificate Authority is performed once.
• Signing is performed for each certificate on behalf of users.

The steps to create the CA Private Key and CA Certificate are similar to Creating the Private Key and Certificate Signing Request for self-issued Certificates.

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Creating the Private Key and Certificate Signing Request

Steps include to create the signing-ca.key CA Private Key file and signing-ca.csr CA Certificate Signing Request file both in PEM format.

Users can run the following commands from the shell and replace the value of the ca_key_name environment variable with a name of their choice that is used when creating related files.

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ECDSA Encryption

# Specify

 key name used for file names
ca_key_name=signing-ca

# Create Private Key
openssl ecparam -genkey -name secp384r1 -out ${ca_key_name}.key

# Create

 Certificate Signing Request
openssl req -new -

sha512 -nodes \
    -

key ${ca_key_name}.key \
    -out ${ca_key_name}.csr \
    -subj "/C=DE/ST=Berlin/L=Berlin/O=SOS/OU=IT/CN=${ca_key_name}"

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Users have the option to create self-signed Certificates or Private CA-signed Certificates.

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Users can run the following commands from the shell and replace the value of the key_name environment variable with a name of their choice that is used when creating related files.

# Specify key name used for file names
key_name=signing

# Create Certificate
openssl x509 -req -sha512 -days 3652 \
    -signkey ${key_name}.key \
    -in ${key_name}.csr \
    -out ${key_name}.crt \
    -extfile <(printf "keyUsage=critical,nonRepudiation,digitalSignature\nextendedKeyUsage=critical,codeSigning\n")

Self-signed Certificates must be copied to the <data>/config/private/trusted-x509-keys directory of Controller and Agent instances.

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For Private CA-signed Certificates a Certificate Authority (CA) is required owning a CA Private Key and CA Certificate. The CA Private Key and CA Certificate will be used to sign certificates on behalf of users.

• Setup of the Certificate Authority is performed once.
• Signing is performed for each certificate on behalf of users.

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The steps to create the CA Private Key and CA Certificate are similar to Creating the Private Key and Certificate Signing Request for self-signed Certificates.

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@rem Specify key name used for file names
set ca_key_name=signing-ca
 
@rem Create Private Key
openssl ecparam -genkey -name secp384r1 -out %ca_key_name%.key
 
@rem Create Certificate Signing Request 
openssl req -new -sha512 -nodes ^
    -key %ca_key_name%.key ^
    -out %ca_key_name%.csr ^
    -subj "/C=DE/ST=Berlin/L=Berlin/O=SOS/OU=IT/CN=%ca_key_name%"

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Using RSA Encryption

# Specify key name used for file names
ca_key_name=signing-ca

# Create Private Key and Certificate Signing Request
openssl req -new -newkey rsa:4096 -sha256 -nodes \
    -keyout ${ca_key_name}.key \
    -out ${ca_key_name}.csr \
    -subj "/C=DE/ST=Berlin/L=Berlin/O=SOS/OU=IT/CN=${ca_key_name}"

@rem Specify key name used for file names
set ca_key_name=signing-ca
 
@rem Create Private Key and Certificate Signing Request
openssl req -new -newkey rsa:4096 -sha256 -nodes ^
    -keyout %ca_key_name%.key ^
    -out %ca_key_name%.csr ^
    -subj "/C=DE/ST=Berlin/L=Berlin/O=SOS/OU=IT/CN=%ca_key_name%"

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Creating the CA Certificate

Steps include to create the signing-ca.crt Private CA-signed Certificate file in PEM format.

Users can run the following commands from the shell and replace the value of the ca_key_name environment variable with a name of their choice that is used when creating related files.

# Specify key name used for file names
ca_key_name=signing-ca

# Create Certificate
openssl x509 -req -sha512 -days 7305 \
    -signkey ${ca_key_name}.key \
    -in ${ca_key_name}.csr \
    -out ${ca_key_name}.crt \
    -extfile <(printf "basicConstraints=CA:TRUE\nkeyUsage=critical,nonRepudiation,keyCertSign,cRLSign\n")

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Steps include to create the signing-ca.key CA Private Key file and signing-ca.csr CA Certificate Signing Request file both in PEM format.

Users can run the following commands from the shell and replace the value of the ca_key_name environment variable with a name of their choice that is used when creating related files.

# Specify key name used for file names
ca_key_name=signing-ca

# Create Private Key
openssl ecparam -genkey -name secp384r1 -out ${ca_key_name}.key

# Create Certificate Signing Request
openssl req -new -sha512 -nodes \
    -key ${ca_key_name}.key \
    -out ${ca_key_name}.csr \
    -subj "/C=DE/ST=Berlin/L=Berlin/O=SOS/OU=IT/CN=${ca_key_name}"

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Steps include to create the signing-ca.crt Private CA-signed Certificate file in PEM format.

Users can run the following commands from the shell and replace the value of the ca_key_name environment variable with a name of their choice that is used when creating related files.

@rem Specify key name used for file names
set ca_key_name=signing-ca
 
@rem Create Certificate
set ca_crt_tmp_file=ca-crt-%RANDOM%.tmp
echo basicConstraints=CA:TRUE >> %ca_crt_tmp_file%
echo keyUsage=critical,nonRepudiation,keyCertSign,cRLSign >> %ca_crt_tmp_file%

openssl x509 -req -sha512 -days 7305 

^
    -

key 

%ca_key_

name%.key 

^
    -in 

%ca_key_

name%.csr 

^
    -out 

%ca_key_

name%.crt 

^
    -extfile

 %ca_crt_tmp_file%

del /q %ca_crt_tmp_file%

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